


Space Dementia

by SlytherinTom



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Angst, Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mild Language, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 05:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9704318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinTom/pseuds/SlytherinTom
Summary: “I don’t understand you, Harry! You hated him!”The door bangs behind him.He’s out of here.He brings the stick to his mouth to light it again and breathes in deep. He exhales.Alive, he thinks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was also posted on fanfiction.net under the same username.
> 
> I don't have many words, just wanted to thank my soulmate, who made all of this possible and suffered through all of my existential crisis. Thank you, My Soul.
> 
> Disclaimer: All of them applies, apart from the fanfiction itself, of course.
> 
> Let me know what you think. Thanks.

_**Space Dementia.** _

 

-I-

 

"Why is she angry at you? Did you break up or something?”

A pause.

_“Do you see it, Harry? You changed."_

“Dunno.”

Harry doesn’t know who he’s answering.

It doesn't matter. It’s a lie either way.

“Mate, she literally screamed murder at me when I asked about you and… she’s kinda sleeping around.”

Ron chokes when he says that last words and coughs noisily, the sound echoing strangely in the otherwise silent kitchen of twelve Grimmauld Place. Harry takes a drag from the joint in his hand and feels his mind slip a bit. He sags in his chair.

He likes how that takes the edge off his mind.

He isn't looking at Ron, doesn't know if it’s because of some kind of guilt he’s feeling. He just knows that he can't seem to look away from the smoke curling over his head. He takes another hit, inhales deeper this time.

Ron balls his fist on the table, looks at the thing in his hand like he wants to say something about it then decides otherwise. “Ohi, are you even listening to me?!”

Harry exhales the smoke, not lowering his gaze he closes his eyes. The world swims, it’s like he’s on a boat.

“I'm high.” He blurts out.

“ _What_? Is that... Pot?” That’s Hermione, her tone suggests he could have as well robbed a bank. Oh well, he hadn’t even been aware she had come in with Ron.

This time he looks at them, eyes feeling heavy, just to be sure he isn't hallucinating anything. He arches his brows. He thinks of Tom who can do that with just one, it would have fit better. “You couldn't tell?”

She is dumbfounded, Harry breathily snorts at her face and coughs when it gets caught in his sore throat.

“Ah, hell, don’t look at me like that… Before you ask, I found it in Sirius bedroom, so it's okay." He frowns, that sounded better in his head. His voice roughly scratches his throat, and it causes another bit of coughing. Smoking doesn’t seem a brilliant idea like it did five minutes ago, anymore.

His head spins again, he blinks and widens his eyes a bit to focus on his two friends.

“That’s not okay!” Hermione sounds distressed. He locks eyes with her for a second before looking away, the thoughts from before starts to eating him up inside again. He hates her a bit for that.

_“Just leave.”_

“Harry, look at us. Look at me. What happened? Why are you doing this to yourself?”

_“He is destroying you, he is shaping you as he sees fit for himself. I hope you realize it before it’s too late.”_

Harry doesn’t look at them, he looks down at the joint in his hand and feels stupid. He can’t even remember why he thought that lighting it was a good idea.

He feels pressure behind his eyes and tries to blink it away. “I… I thought, I don’t know, I-” He shakes his head, “-Why are you here, again?”

Hermione’s shoulders slumps, she looks hurt. Ron makes an angry noise and with a speed that should be far beyond Harry’s slowed reflexes, he tries to pluck the joint out of his hand. Harry makes a distressed whine and waves him away, hiding his hand under the table.

Harry doesn’t have it in him to argue about it anyway. He sighs and his world tilts as he rests his head on kitchen table. It smells, he doesn’t know if it is actually better or worse for the clawing up nausea in his stomach.

“Harry-”

“She cheated on me.” This comes out of his mouth. He vows he isn’t ever smoking again, and wishes it could be true.

“ _What_.”

As he thinks if they could just stop repeating that word over and over, he says: “And I cheated on her… Somewhat, not like she did anyway. She doesn’t really know.”

From the corner of his eye he sees Ron’s arms flail. “Wait. Wait. Who did it first? - Ow!”

“Ronald!”

Harry drowns out their voices, knowing they would just bicker between them for some time. His gaze is fixed on a dirty spot of the kitchen elements, waiting for the dizziness to flow out of his body. Grimmauld Place is the house his godfather left to him after passing away about a year ago. Harry has lived in this house for the last seven years and it has always been a bit on the gloomy side, it needs cleaning a lot. But now, with just one inhabitant, it’s downright haunting in its sad silence and wide void spaces.

It truly is a bit too much for just a person.

“I think I’ll sell this place.” He barely murmurs it, but by the shocked silence that follows, the other two heard just as well.

A warm hand is laid on his cheek, the pressure behind his eyes comes back with a vengeance and a lump in his aching throat. “Harry, you’re not feeling well. I think you should go to bed.”

These words actually gets on his nerves and he scowls. Harry raises his head, shrugging off in the process Hermione’s hand.

“Whatever.” He gets up, but doesn’t go towards the stairs. His steps have a purpose, he knows where he wants to go. Where he needs to go. He takes a deep breath to settle a bit.

Hermione looks like she wants to ask where he’s heading as he moves to pick a jacket, but she quickly seems to realize something, because she suddenly gets up and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Harry, I know where you’re going. Don’t do it. Stay, talk to us.” Her tone, bordering on broken towards the end, strikes something raw in Harry’s chest and he falters in his movements as his fingers brush his wallet. The now unlit joint feels heavy in his hand.

_“He is destroying you.”_

Though this gets Ron attention. “Where?”

She rolls her eyes. “You know where.”

Ron widens his eyes and gets up too. “What?! You’re going to him?”

Harry breaks out of his stupor with a huff, he puts the wallet in his back pocket and he turns the knob of the entrance door. “Remember to lock the place when you go.”

“I don’t understand you, Harry! You hated him!”

The door bangs behind him.

He’s out of here.

He brings the stick to his mouth to light it again and breathes in deep. He exhales.

 _Alive_ , he thinks.

\-----------

_Ginny’s hair flowed gently on her back, he liked the shine they gave off with the yellow street lamp. The corners of her red lips were pulled down in a frown and as she blinked, he watched the way her black lashes, heavy with makeup, fluttered up and down. She looked gorgeous in a way that didn’t settle right with Harry, he liked her better when she acted like the tomboy she was. This tasted false._

_“Let’s end this.” Her eyes looked challenging up at him, her voice steady. Was she trying to leave an impression…?_

_“Okay.” He felt so empty, it was tiring to breathe._

_Her fist trembled at her sides, she was hurting. He didn’t care, he guessed it was fair as long as he was hurting too._

_“You don’t even care. You’re such a prick.” Her voice broke._

_He snorted softly. “I’m a prick. That’s kind of precious coming from you.”_

_She looked like she wanted to say something along his lines, opened her mouth but said nothing. Harry watched it, thinking of the way her lips used to wrap around his cock._

_She closed it. He looked somewhere beyond her left shoulder, trying to will away the headache he could feel forming at his temples._

_“You don’t get to make me the one in the wrong.”_

_He felt anger fill the void, slowly like a waking volcano. He choked out a laugh. “Ah, the funny part is that I don’t need to. You already are.”_

_She pursed her lips, he thought she wanted to spit on him. “You know what, I’ve had enough of your shit. I won’t let you make me feel bad about myself.”_

_He balled a fist, straining with the urge to get physical. “You slept with someone else! In my bed! What kind of warped reality are you living in?! I certainly didn’t have something like this in mind when I gave you my house keys!”_

_“We had an argument and you dropped off the face of the planet for two weeks and then another two after the whole affair with Dean! Without letting explain myself!”_

_Harry tried retorting to that but was cut off._

_“You ignored me for more than a month, because of whatever rotten excuse you have! I knew you weren’t dead in some kind of hole, just because my brother told me you were with Tom Riddle!”_

_“I guess life’s just hard like that sometimes.”_

_“Fuck you, Harry! You’re a hypocrite. I saw how you looked at each other, I’m not blind.”_

_He grasped for words for a moment, and when he hesitated she seemed to get more incensed._

_“Struck a nerve, didn’t I? Well, at least I saved us the part when you were going to start calling out his name during sex!”_

_Harry couldn’t take it anymore, he was so tired he wanted to crawl in bed until the next era. He didn’t answer, just sighed looking away._

_Ginny slapped his shoulder in frustration. This time when she spoke she was on the verge of tears. “See?! You don’t even deny it. You’re fucking pathetic.”_

_This lighted the anger brimming in him just underneath the surface, he shoved her away just enough to make stumble back a bit. “Shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”_

_Her eyes widened a fraction at his outrage, taken aback before retorting with an angry, yet sad expression. “Do you see it, Harry? You’re changed.”_

_He faltered before opening his mouth to answer, but she beat him to it. She threw the keys at his feet. “Just leave.”_

_She turned and made for going back in her home, she stopped before the door. “He is destroying you, and shaping you as he sees fit for himself. I hope you realize it before it’s too late.”_

_In the silence of the night he crouched down to pick up the shiny keys to Grimmauld Place._

_He was now alone in front of the burrow. It didn’t feel like home like it used to._

_He gritted his teeth and stepped away._

\-----------

His knuckles hesitate before knocking on Tom’s door, the resounding beats shaking him up a bit. Just breathing burns him deep in his lungs, and his heart feels ready to fall out of his chest. God, what was he thinking. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea.

Today he’s just brimming with them, isn’t he?

It’s already too late to contemplate other plans as the door opens behind his still raised fist. The face which greets him isn’t the one he is searching for. He puts his hands in his pockets as he tries looking over the blond head in front of him, but the other just obstructs his line of vision again.

“Hello to you too, Potter.”

The smirk that unravels across his mouth is as ugly and dull as he feels. The nausea rears up foul again. "Fuck off, Malfoy.”

Draco smirks right back at him and steps aside. “One would think with all the time you spend around Tom, you would have rubbed off of him some manners. Why do I still have hope left for you?”

“I’m just special like that.” He half stumbles his way through scanning the room for the familiar cunning dark eyes.

He vaguely hears Draco cackling behind his back. “Your eyes are red and you reek of weed! What am I seeing here? Saint Potter got stoned all by himself?!”

Tom’s apartment isn’t very big, still at least eight people are cramped in his living space engaged in conversations, card games and just general chilling. Is that Nott's head that peeked from behind the couch…?

Before he can make sense of what he is seeing a freezing hand descends on his neck, making him flinch.

He turns just in time to see Tom’s chuckle leave his lips, the hand on his neck smoothly slides, resting possessively on his shoulder. Harry feels the warmth of Tom’s chest pressed against his other arm and sighs. _This_ was his real addiction.

“Harry, I wasn’t expecting you. It’s good to see you. Don’t worry about my friends, they’ll leave in an hour or so.”

Draco makes a gagging sound somewhere in the background, but Harry doesn’t care. Not when Tom is smiling gently down at him, true elation lighting up his eyes at seeing Harry.

It is too much.

“We broke up.”

Tom’s face turns carefully blank, his eyes boring intently his own.

“O-or, well, Ginny broke up with me. She cheated on me and she left me. How fucked up is that?” His voice breaks more times than he cares to admit, but he still laughs at the end of his sentence. It’s truly ironic.

Tom’s expression doesn’t change, and Harry is suddenly starkly reminded of the first time they met. Only difference, is that at the time that was Tom’s everyday face.

Lately Harry finds himself thinking a lot about that night, he absently notices. He was seven, freezing his arse off on the edge of the cold sidewalk in front of number 4 Private Drive. His face was lightly aching on the left side, his left eyelid felt a little stiff but he didn’t care about it, keeping his mind carefully blank. It was night.

Harry tensed as he first heard the light steps on the concrete, then saw a pair of ugly run down shoes paired with mismatched socks directly in front of him, looking up he saw something that didn’t match them at all. Barely a teen, very tall and gangly, dark hair neatly combed, his clothes were well cured and his face clean. He was looking down at him with a flat look on his face.

“What are you doing?” His voice didn’t have inclinations. Something about it, paired with his expression, disturbed Harry.

He hesitantly pouted, looking up at the other from above the rim of his skewed round glasses. “What’s it to you?”

The other shifted his feet. “Little kids shouldn’t be out of bed at this hour.”

Harry sniffled a bit miffed. “Well, then you shouldn’t too.”

The other didn’t show any reaction, apart from the clenched his fist at his sides, and didn’t say anything. He just stared deeply at him and surveyed his face, eyes lingering on what Harry guessed was an extensive bruise. He turned the other way to hide it, feeling self-conscious.

After what felt like several minutes, but really wasn’t, the teen relaxed his posture with a tired sigh. Harry still didn’t let go his tension, the other didn’t seem like a bully to him but it was better stay on alert now than being sorry later.

He just sat down beside him.

Something warm stirred deep in Harry’s chest.

“I’m Harry.” He said looking down at his feet. There was something pleasant about the fact that his shoes were as dingy as the other’s.

“Tom.”

They didn’t shake hands, didn’t even look at each other anymore in fact. They stayed like that the rest of the night, until Harry’s Aunt came outside whispering things like: “what will the neighbor think if they saw you mingling about the sidewalk like a loon?!” and “who the hell are you?! Out of the way! Go be a beggar elsewhere!”.

Harry didn’t point out how it had been Uncle Vernon that had closed him outside, again, and that Tom certainly wasn’t a beggar. But instead he let himself being manhandled inside, keeping his gaze on Tom retreating form. When the other looked back too, Harry was quick to wave at him.

He just turned and walked away.

It had happened again, and again. One way or another they would just find each other, outside of school, at the park, on the sidewalk or whatever. They didn’t ever say much, but Harry started to love what they had anyway. It wasn’t much, but it was comfortable and it felt good.

He had even started to learn about Tom, the awkwardly genius boy living with his delirious Uncle, and Tom about Harry, the scrawny gloomy kid no one wanted. They were… something. And it was special.

That at least was, until Ron and Hermione happened.

Harry is taken back to the present by Tom’s voice. “Are you high, Harry?”

“Yeah, that was what I was trying to-” Draco’s voice is quickly snuffed out by the quick dark glare Tom sends his way.

Harry becomes aware that he still is laughing. “High as a kite.”

By the time Tom stirs him out of his living room he had started hyperventilating and the arms around him are gripping him a lot tighter, they feel like a lifeline.

He can’t focus to make out what Tom is saying to Draco, but he couldn’t care less when all he wants to do is to curl down on the floor and just die. It feels like it anyway, what with the way his heart seems ten times faster than a moment ago and running a race up his lungs, which couldn’t seem to get enough air in.

He starts to gulp on it.

Sometime later than that his head hits something soft. A pillow, he is on Tom’s bed. That somehow wrangles a whining sound out of him.

His chaotic line of sight is suddenly occupied by two familiar big dark grey eyes. “Harry. Harry! Look at me!”

He gasps in answer at Tom, he can actually feel himself growing less frantic but words just seem out of reach at the moment.

“What do we do Tom?!” A panicked voice. Malfoy.

“Shut up, Draco! Get out of here.”

Tom cradles Harry’s face in his hands, not bothering to look if the blond did what was told. When he sees Harry’s eyes focus entirely on him and hears his breathing calm a bit, Tom slightly quirks his mouth in a smile.

“Hey.” It’s warm, and Harry feels his eyes flutter at the emotion building up inside him.

“Hey, Tom.” He finally finds his voice.

Tom’s thumb moves slowly on his cheek. A caress. “Harry, what do you feel?”

Harry sighs, Tom’s murmured words doing wonders on his previous panicked state. “I feel like my head is flying away and my heart feels like is beating a thousand per second.”

Tom frowns a bit, moving one of the fingers on his face under his jaw to feel his pulse. “Strange, you never reacted like this before, to anything you took.”

“…Tom, should I call an ambulance?”

This time Tom turns towards the blond to glare at him. “You’re still here?”

“But-”

“Get. Out. Now. If you don’t, I promise you will be the one in need of an ambulance.”

The other makes a hasty retreat.

Tom turns towards him again, he’s so near that when he sighs Harry’s bangs move. “Harry, are you feeling better? We’ll just wait until you ride it out, mh?”

He still feels jittery thanks to his pounding heart, but his mind is somehow settling down. “Yeah.”

Tom’s face has that blank look again but Harry feels calmer, because he knows the masks Tom uses to hide behind and that wasn’t one of them.

Tom wipes something that must be tears off his face, neither of them says anything. Harry thinks again of when they were kids and his heart stutters.

When the staring down between them starts to feel too much, Harry rolls on his back, reluctantly slipping out of Tom’s hold, and scoots a bit, making space on the bed for the other in a silent invite. Tom gets up, but instead of laying himself down he goes to his cheap stereo to set up a playlist.

Harry just stares up at the white ceiling and poises a hand on his chest as the notes from _You Could Be Happy_ by Snow Patrol fills the room, his heart finally slowing down. He finds himself mouthing along the words of the song:

_“You could be happy and I won't know,_

_But you weren't happy the day I watched you go…”_

He feels the bed dip as he absently wonders if he is stealing Tom from his life outside this room, for little bit. He surprisingly finds himself not caring, he feels satisfied instead.

The silence is less heavy with the song filling it, but Harry can feel himself crack at the edges all the same.

“What did Nott take to end up half dead behind your coach?”

A sigh. “Ah, that’s where he ended up.”

“ _Tom_.”

“ _Harry_.”

Harry scoffs. “Tell me.”

A stretch of silence.

_“Is it too late to remind you how we were?_

_But not our last days of silence, screaming, blur…”_

“Heroine.”

Harry thinks that should have shocked him, but instead just a quiet apprehension mounts inside him.

“Oh.”

He hears Tom shift, poises a hand over his own on his chest. “I didn’t… I don’t.” A few seconds, he adds: “He just asked for it, and I provided him.”

Harry turns too and finds himself centimetres away from Tom’s face. Contentedness replaces the turmoil in his stomach. “That’s good.”

Tom exhales from his nose, the air fanning across Harry’s own. His eyes are directed downwards, supposedly focused on his friend’s lips. Harry parts them as a reflex and Tom’s gaze turns heated.

He revels in it.

He doesn’t think of anything else as he catches Tom’s mouth with his own.

It’s tender, lips brushing with just a hint of teeth, but the way Harry feels his insides move was anything but. His stomach pleasantly aches and he gasps at the feeling, raising a hand to cup Tom’s neck lest he breaks the kiss at the sound. Tom just tightens his grip on the soft skin of Harry’s waist and kisses him harder, making an embarrassing wet sound when he sucks on Harry’s bottom lip.

Neither of them cares.

_“Somehow everything I own smells of you_

_And for the tiniest moment it's all not true…”_

It isn’t their first kiss, after all.

 

-II-

_Tom looks down at the sleeping beauty in his bed._

_A possessive feeling curls in his chest, but he can easily ignore it, he is used to it by now. What is new is the knowledge that he can now indulge in it, Harry’s heart is now free for him to snatch and hide from the world._

_What he doesn’t understand is why it took so much time for the other male to break free of that red-haired whore. She had at least been useful enough to end matters on her own, playing perfectly Tom’s hands._

_He cards his fingers through Harry’s hair. A sense of peace invades his chest as he thinks that yes, he had had to force destiny’s hand a little bit, but it was more than worth it._

\-----------

Turns out smoking something found loose out of a cabinet that hasn’t been opened for at the very least twelve months, isn’t a good idea. And that is in truth an understatement. Tom defines it “positively suicidal”.

Harry doesn’t have the nerve to argue since he has fallen asleep on him in the middle of a snogging session, he has instead the sense of looking abashed when Tom woke him up that morning. The other just rolled his eyes and claimed the shower first.

That is how Harry finds himself at Tom’s kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee, while he distractedly gazes at the pristine living room. It’s like there had never been a gathering in the first place.

Listening to the running shower has Harry coming up with none too innocent images of Tom in his birthday suit. He bites his lip and palmed his waking arousal through his trousers, he truly was losing his sanity.

As he’s contemplating the frightening idea of joining Tom in the shower box, the sound of running water stops.

Harry silently crosses his legs.

“Ah, coffee. Did you leave some for me?”

Harry points the coffee maker. “Over there.”

“Good.”

He sips his coffee as he listens to the clattering sounds coming from the kitchen elements.

“So, did you find a job? Because if not, you could become my housewife. I wouldn’t mind finding already prepared coffee every morning.”

He just knows that Tom timed that to make him choke on his drink. He refrains glaring at the other while he pats his back, shaken as he tries to hack up the liquid he just inhaled.

With a scratchy voice, he manages to say: “No, thanks. Still looking.”

Tom looks at him with hooded eyes, before he sets his cup on the kitchen counter. He crowds Harry against the table with a knowing smirk as he sees the other’s face become redder and redder.

Harry tries in vain to hide himself behind the cup.

Tom hums. “Why not? You already sleep in my bed most nights of the week.”

Harry looks at him with wide eyes. Is Tom asking him to move in together?

“The least you could do is wash the sheets.”

Harry sharply lowers his cup away from his face. “Why, you! You- you git!”

Tom’s smirk is devilish this time and leans in a bit more. Harry mind blanks out as their lips faintly brush.

That’s about when Tom’s phone starts to beep.

He pulls away to check it and Harry has to restrain himself from making a disappointed sound.

Tom gives him a knowing look, before speeding back to his room. “I need to be at _Borgin and Burkes_ , in a half.”

Harry blinks, looking at the clock on the wall. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t even realize…”

“Don’t mention it.” Says Tom from his room. Then adds: “You can stay here. If you want.”

Harry feels himself slow down as he gathers his things, which is composed of his jacket only, until he completely stops. What is Tom implying? He is surely implying something, Harry knows that. The other man simply isn’t physically capable of saying something without a double meaning.

Harry racks his brain to explain what is happening, but comes up with nothing.

He quietly observes Tom coming back to the living room and opening the door cladded for work, he doesn’t look at him as he says: “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

Harry feels blank as he answers: “Yeah, tonight.”

Tom leaves.

Ten minutes later he leaves the apartment too.

\-----------

Dropping out of university wasn’t the big part of the mess that had been Sirius’ death. The big part was the hollowing pain, trying to convince himself that it is possible for someone to simply be there one day and the following not anymore. They reassured him he didn’t suffer, the car crash had been too quick and too violent for him to have been aware of anything, but that if possible left him even more confused. He can’t even say that Sirius had fought to stay with him, to not leave him alone again.

Then he saw the body, and after throwing up what felt like weeks of food, the pain started digging a place for itself deep inside him.

That was when it started the crazy and annoying part of the mess. Sirius’s family is actually a rich one, but Sirius had been disowned when he had been put in jail. They told him that he already was lucky to have the house. Sirius had hated every corner of it but he had to make do when he got out of prison with nothing but Grimmauld Place.

They had managed with the money Harry’s parents left him and the jobs Sirius managed to find to pay for Harry’s local uni.

Now Harry is half-heartedly suffering through jobs applications, because his parents’ savings aren’t endless and Sirius simply isn’t anymore. University isn’t appealing to him anyway, to begin with.

He had already worked at some pubs, but got readily thrown out when he had been caught drunk during one of his shift. Yeah, definitely not one of his best moments.

He is ready to give up on the internet and just go job-hunting on the streets, when his phone lights up from beside him. It’s a call.

He checks the caller ID and groans. He answers, thinking it was better to get this out of the way sooner than later.

Somehow guilt replaces the annoyance he felt at first as he listens to Hermione rant his ear off about how worried they are, and _do you have any idea what we thought when you didn’t answer the phone for the rest of the night?!_

He palms his face with a sigh. He really is a bad friend, isn’t he?

“I’m going out, do you want to meet up?”

“Don’t say that as if everything’s okay!” She sounds like she is on the verge of tears and Harry feels a new pain in his heart, because he is hurting his friends too now.

His next words are quiet and tired, but sincere. “I’m sorry, Hermione.”

She doesn’t answer, but he knows the line isn’t dead because he can hear her breathing heavily into the receiver, as if trying to calm down.

Harry continues. “It’s- Everything’s just _hard_ sometimes, you know?”

It sounds like a question, but she knows he didn’t need an answer.

“I…just think you’re dealing with this the wrong way, I mean, really, Harry? Where does smoking pot even come from?” She sounds winded down, but still on the edge.

He scratches his neck. “Yeah, that was…um, stupid?”

A snort. “You could say that.”

Harry feels the knot in his stomach ease a bit.

Hermione sighs. “You know that I’m always by your side, right? And I mean it. Ron and I tried to talk to Ginny, but… She said some unkind things about you, that I won’t bother repeating, and I sort of said some unkind things to her which led to a big fight and Ron kinda lost it trying to separate us but it looked like he was taking Ginny’s side and I just-”

Harry chuckles. “Hermione, breathe.”

Hermione’s laugh is tremulous, she finally takes a deep breath. “Yeah, sorry. I guess it’s just that I’m a bit stressed. I stormed out on him, you know, and now I’m feeling pretty stupid…”

Harry listens to her rambling a bit more, with an unconscious little smile on his lips. “Listen, do you want to come over? I’ll make you hot chocolate.”

She gasps. “Oh, yes! I’ll bring some whipped cream, then!”

Harry jokingly groans. “Ow, you just had to go and make it worse, didn’t you?”

“What? How is whipped cream worse?!”

They both laugh hard and Harry feels one of the cracks in his soul shift back into place.

\------------

The story of how his relationship with Tom became the mess it is now is a simple one. Tom has always been one to just take what he wanted, without uncertain terms. So, the way he showed Harry his intentions hadn’t been subtle, at all. He would grasp his hand, bring it to his lips or just generally invade his personal space more than it was socially acceptable. Harry for his part at first thought it was just a way to mess with him, it was Tom after all, he loved to embarrass him. It wasn't a novelty, it was something he had always lived with.

What was new was the flirty smiles, the teasing touches and everything Harry had mistaken as joking. It all took a new light when one afternoon Malfoy had loudly scoffed at Tom's attempts to make Harry sit on his lap.

“Would you two stop for a second to play the happily married couple, you’re so cute you're giving me toothache. Just come out in the open and say you're dating, at least we can settle who has won the bet.”

Tom hadn't been too pleased and the blond had regretted it in a matter of seconds, but Harry finally pieced together the (not at all) subtle behavioural pattern.

“So you were… friends at first?” Hermione’s voice shakes him out of his reverie.

“Sort of.” He nods, his gaze fixed on the almost melted cream at the top of his hot chocolate. He moves it with his spoon, lightly mixing the two milky substances.

“But when you became friend with me and Ron he started bullying you, right?”

Her voice sounds patient and willing to listen, Harry was grateful for that. He doesn’t think he could handle a frantic Hermione right now. He can’t even look in to her eyes.

“Yes, but it was just some mean glares and a bit of shoving,” more like shouting matches ending more times than he likes to admit in kicks and punches, but she doesn’t need to know that- “not that I was seeing him around a lot to begin with. He even stopped that as the years passed, I guess it just hurt to lose someone so close like that.”

He risks a glance up to find that Hermione has been gazing him the entire time with the same look she has when she is trying to solve a difficult Maths’ question. She looks like she wants to say something, but holds herself back.

Then she tries again. “And now you’re friends again, at least according to that bitch-”

Harry gasps, chuckling. “You swore!”

“-how came to be that one, anyway?” She ignores him, but he can see the amused spark in her eyes.

Harry takes time to gather his thoughts fiddling a bit with his hands and adjusting his glasses on his nose. “Well, you remember how it was when Sirius died?”

She sadly nods.

“Then you remember how I would snap at literally nothing. I was just so angry… I didn’t know what to do, I was completely lost and when I tried to take a direction in life again,” he takes a deep breath and looks at her straight in the eyes. “He was there. Magically, as if nothing ever happened between us in the first place, as if we were the same kids from before.”

It had maddened him at time, because on top of all the pain and frustration Tom had to add himself to it. But in truth he didn’t make it worse, he just reached out to him and Harry had grasped onto him like a starving man. It had been humiliating but they have finally reached a balance of sorts, or at least he hopes it’s balanced. One can never say with Tom.

He thinks of the kiss of the day before. Definitely, balanced is too mild of a word for what they have.

Hermione crosses her arms deep in thought and says: “Then, what happened with Ginny?”

“She cheated on me.” He states.

She gives him a scolding look. “You already said that.”

At his silence she sighs, then adds: “You also said that you cheated on her.”

“Did I?”

Suddenly she pinches his arm, hard. “Ow! What was that for?!”

“Do not play this game with me, Harry Potter! Now, spill.”

He mutters sulkily about how totally unnecessary that was, but then answers nonetheless.

“I kissed Tom.”

Her eyes widens, floundered. “Oh my… You really kissed him?”

He rolls his eyes and rests his head against the couch’s backrest. He nods. “Or he kissed me, can’t really tell. The first was a few days the whole drama with Ginny started. Best kiss of my life, too.”

“I’d laugh at your dreamy look right now, if I didn’t know who we’re talking about…” She snorts, takes a big gulp of chocolate and adds: “So, you like him.”

He frowns, he hasn’t really thought about it that way yet. He tends to avoid the topic even with himself. “I guess.”

“ _You guess_?” Harry doesn’t need to look at her to know the look she was wearing, saying that.

“Okay, okay, I like him. A lot. Lay off, now.” He concedes.

He waits nervously for her answer, keeping his eyes on a part of the ceiling where the paint is coming off. The more the silence stretches on, the more his lungs close on themselves. He didn’t realize how much his friends’ opinion mattered to him, it feels good to open up to Hermione. He just hopes he isn’t going to regret it.

He feels her shift a bit, then says: “Well, he’s hot. That’s for sure.”

A disbelieving laugh bursts out of him, shortly followed by Hermione’s own. He turns his head to look at her and thinks how beautiful she was when she was happy, how her eyes shine and wrinkle just so.

Ron is a lucky guy.

They spend the rest of the afternoon lounging on the creaky couch, just enjoying each other company. Hermione doesn’t press about any more information on the matter and Harry is glad, he knows she is just worried but he doesn’t feel ready to do anything about it.

He is on the verge to try persuade her to have a quick dinner together, when his phone rings. As they see Malfoy’s name light up the screen, he feels Hermione stiffen from beside him, he falters and when he picks up the call she silently gets up. He can see the grip on the now empty cup is tense.

He sighs, kneading his brows. “What do you want?”

“Aw, that hurt. I thought we were on the right road to become besties.”

His chuckle isn’t that convinced as his eyes follows Hermione going for the kitchen. He feels the warmth leave the room with her.

“Hey, Potter! You there?”

Harry shakes his head and gets up himself. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, I was distracted.”

“Yeah, figured.” Harry hears him inhale and exhale deeply, he is smoking then. “Anyway, wanted to remind you of tomorrow night. Do you want to come before? We wanted to meet up before heading to the club, Blaise is getting some good stuff, he says.”

He shoots a quick glance where Hermione disappeared, but doesn’t see her. He bites his lower lip.

“Yes, I remember… I’d like that. I’ll be there.” He doesn’t remember. He closes his eyes and hates himself.

Malfoy makes a whistling sound. “Cool. Got to run now, see you.”

“Bye.” He hangs up and stares at his phone for a few seconds. With a heavy sigh, he brings it to his forehead closing his eyes. He lightly hits himself.

“So, you hang out with Malfoy now.”

He winces as Hermione voice cuts through him like a knife. The disappointed look on her face digs something fierce in him and the hole in his chest makes itself known again.

He stares ahead of himself as he speaks. “I-” he can’t look at her. “It’s not-”

“Save it.” A sigh. “I-I’m not angry. It’s just… a bit much right now, you know.”

He doesn’t know. He can’t even understand why he feels guilty right now, he isn’t committing a crime by having other friends.

“I know.” He says anyway.

She chuckles bitterly. “This sort of explains the joint.” He opens his mouth to explain. Then again, there is nothing to add to that, so he closes it.

She leaves shortly after.

Before leaving though, she touched his shoulder and said: “I didn’t want to make you upset tonight, but seeing as thing are now… You ought to know that Dean Thomas had overheard Riddle saying you and Ginny broke up before he tried to hit on her.”

A surge of scalding heat goes through his spine, then emptiness.

He feels nothing.

As the sound of the front door closing gives away to the oppressing silence that always haunts Grimmauld Place, Harry thinks again of selling the damn place.

Then he shouts at nothing. Because there is no one to hear anyway.

\------------

Harry finds himself again in front of Tom’s door, he wants to break it down, to burn it the ground, to destroy it in every way possible and imaginable. He doesn’t know if it’s still about the door he’s thinking.

This time it’s Tom himself who lets him through and Harry barges right past him. “If you needed to come here so bad, you just could have said so. I’ll give you the spare keys, darling.”

Harry doesn’t answer, the pet name just adds fuel to the inferno roaring inside him. Instead he rests his clenched fists on the table in the living room, lest he tries to stamp them on the other’s face. He doesn’t face him and when Tom doesn’t add anything, he knows he has sensed something wasn’t right.

Harry takes a deep breath. “Did you tell Dean I broke up with Ginny? When it wasn’t true, I mean.”

He hears two steps. “No.”

Harry turns. “What?”

Tom’s face is completely blank, but Harry can tell he is tense. “I said no, I didn’t _tell_ him.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “What do you mean? What did you do?”

“I simply mentioned in passing, to Draco mind you, that you were through with that girl. Thomas just happened to be nearby.”

Harry laughs disbelievingly and approaches him. “Oh! The nerve… Where do you get the ability to play it cool?!”

Tom waves him off. “Stop making a big deal out of nothing. It was true, even though it wasn’t official. I just gave the situation a shove in the right direction.”

Harry keeps himself at lunge range. “You call this the right direction?! It hurt me, she took him in my home! How could you do something like that?!”

Tom’s eyes are suddenly alight with rage. He grips his flailing arms, Harry flinches and thinks for a moment he might crush his wrist. When he speaks, it’s through gritted teeth.

“While that was certainly a nice touch, I hadn’t planned it. And I didn’t force her to sleep with that dimwit.”

Tom shakes him. “Besides, I wouldn’t had had to do it, if you’d just broke out of your fucking stupor and stopped dragging along the dead weight that was that relationship.”

“It doesn’t justify what you’ve done. It wasn’t your business!” Harry tries to dislodge wrists free, but his attempts fail.

Tom gets even more incensed at his words and shoves him against the wall. Harry’s back hits it with an empty thud, it knocks Harry’s breath out of him.

“Wasn’t my business?! How dare you! It has been my business since our first kiss, since I shared my bed with you! I put myself on the line and you didn’t even deign to acknowledge it.”

Tom tilted his head to the side. “Or what, did you think I was your dirty secret affair, mh?"

Harry doesn’t have any words to that, something like shame crawls at the back of his throat. “No, I-I…”

Tom shoves his crotch against his, not hard enough to hurt but enough to make him gasp at the sudden feeling. Tom rests his forehead against his own and moves one hand from his wrist to his neck, fingers curling around it.

He doesn’t squeeze, but Harry feels conscious of their weight. His next words are an angry whisper against his lips. “I wanted to kill her every time I thought of her touching you, every time I thought she was soiling you.”

Tom grinds his hips, and Harry wonders what the fuck is wrong with him as he realizes he is hard. A hitched sound leaves his throat.

Tom rubs cheek against Harry’s, his breath is heavy in the other’s ear. “It is my business, Harry, it’ll always be. You know why, don’t you? You are mine.”

Harry is about to protest about his last proclamation, but he is suddenly occupied by a pair of hungry lips forcing open his own. He bites at them, but it just serves to turn the kiss more heated, than anything else. This time when he tugs, his wrist gets free, but instead of shoving Tom away like he was planning of doing, he wraps one hand behind his neck and one at the small of his back and pushes him closer.

Tom groans in his mouth and the hand curled around his throat unfurls to travel down his side, to grip the bend of his knee and hike Harry’s leg up on his hip.

The friction between their now hard cocks intensifies and Harry lets out a moan, breaking away from the kiss. Tom though doesn’t stop and starts a trail of kisses, bites and licks down Harry’s neck.

Harry can just gasp through it, answering to Tom’s hips’ circling motions with frantic ones of his own. He feels his other leg start to tremble, not able to sustain all his weight.

“Bed.” He utters, breathless.

Tom doesn’t stop, and Harry is about to sigh frustrated, but in a sudden move Tom grabs his other leg to wrap it around his waist. Harry scrambles with his hands to lock his arms behind Tom’s neck, and says nothing as the other wraps his under his ass to hold him up.

The way to the bedroom is silent, except for their loud laboured breathing.

Tom drops him with his back on the mattress and takes a few seconds to look at him and carefully slip his glasses off his nose. As soon as he folds them on the bedside table Harry drags him down to his lips once again.

He feels feverish, like it’s never enough. He wants, he wants, he wants.

They pause long enough to take their clothes off, though Harry manages sneak in between kisses and bites and whatever. Tom is only too happy to oblige. They fall back on the bed, Tom finds place between Harry’s thighs kneading them with his hands as he tastes his skin mouthing along every ridge and hard place he finds.

Harry throws his head back ad gasps as their cocks bump against each other, drawing forth an instinctual rocking motion. It feels too much, but he still wants more.

“Tom.” It leaves his mouth in a rush of air, he shoves a hand between them because the friction it’s not enough. The other above him hisses and moans and slides his tongue in his mouth one last time before leaving Harry’s body to rummage in his bedside table.

When Harry sees the bottle of lube in Tom’s hand, his mind finally works out what they’re about to do. He pauses in his movements, but Tom doesn’t register it so he doesn’t stop. He looks him in the eyes when he rests his fingers at his hole.

He moves one, then two his fingers inside him gently but urgently and what Harry thought would have been a quiet gasp comes out as a muffled moan. It doesn’t feel good yet, but the more he strokes his insides, the more the motion feels arousing.

Tom’s huffs in his ear are the biggest turn on right now and Harry turns to look at him. He is flushed, Harry loves how he looks right now and the thought that it’s just for him is intoxicating. Their eyes are locked as Tom adds another finger to stretch.

The air around them gradually calmed down, more conscious of themselves and their actions. Harry feels an emotion devouring him like a spreading fire inside him and he cups Tom’s face with his hands to coax him towards his. He kisses him gentle, deeper as he goes and Tom sags with a sigh above him.

He falters in his movements when he feels Tom’s fingers pulling out, they move to grip his hip. Tom pulls away to look once more in his eyes, searching. Harry spreads his legs wider and hooks them around him.

He slides in slowly, his eyes drinking in every shift in Harry’s face. The other grips his biceps hard, nails digging in the skin, at the rising burn of the intrusion. He wants to hold his gaze, but his sight blurs and he realizes with raising panic that he wants to sob at the overstimulation.

Tom trails kisses down his face and start pulling out and pushing gently in, soon settling on a rhythm that has Harry toss his head back and moan. He feels Tom thrust as if he is fucking his soul, and himself grow agitated before urging him faster, harder.

Tom complies with a long rough moan. “My Harry. Finally.”

The desperate tone of his voice, strikes something deep inside Harry which makes him urge Tom closer. He trails his palms up his shoulders and neck to pull him against himself and arches his back to touch his chest with his own. Tom goes deeper and Harry groans at the sensation.

Their faces are so close they are breathing each other air, the cheap bed creaking loudly at their every movement in a dirty shameful way.

The tightness at the pit of Harry stomach feels unbearable, he tries to regain his breath to say: “Touch me.”

Tom does, he grasps his hardness and strokes it quickly, all the way up and down. Harry comes with a shout, fingers curling, eyes squeezing and ears deafening.

As he comes down from the high of his orgasm he becomes aware of the slapping sound Tom’s hips make against his arse, and ironically that embarrasses him more than anything else. It soon stops as Tom presses in deep one last time, before releasing inside him. Harry slightly chokes on his breath.

They can only listen to their heavy breathing as Tom pulls out and falls beside him.

Something heavy settles on his chest.

He stands up to go to the bathroom, the wetness sliding down his thighs getting more uncomfortable by the second.

He washes and when he goes back to Tom’s bedroom he finds the other has cleaned himself up too. The dirty sheets are tangled on floor and new ones have roughly been laid in their place. Harry settles himself beside him, feeling very little all of sudden.

“What is this?” It doesn’t sound as a question.

“This is us.” Tom says it as if it’s a decree.

Harry wants to laugh.

“Sleep, Harry. Wait for me to get home from work tomorrow.”

Harry doesn’t say anything and turns on his side.

Tom moves to quietly spoon him from behind.

He falls asleep, for the first time without a thought crowding his mind.

 

 

-III-

 

When he wakes up, he’s alone.

He knows Tom had work, but it still unsettles him a bit.

Then he notices that all the blankets are cocooned around him in a soft cosy embrace.

He leaves before that feeling of something growing in his heart can actually flourish.

He spends the day in a daze, fighting himself over what he should do about anything. Everything is a mess and he wastes more time than he cares to admit.

In the evening, Harry meets up with Malfoy at his apartment. Or rather the loft he uses with his friends, god forbid he lets them step a foot in his living residence. Harry wants to punch him.

The door opens. “Hey, guys.”

“What’s up, Harry?” Blaise Zabini greets him, clapping him on the shoulder. Inside, there’s just Malfoy and Theo Nott waiting for them on the couch. Harry notes the latter heavy shadowed eyes, and wonders if he had been in a fight. Then he remembers the other night at Tom’s.

He looks away.

“Hiya, Potter. C’mere, Blaise brought the good stuff for once.” Says Malfoy motioning for the spot beside him. Harry sits down, frowning at the by now familiar fancy furniture. The table is dirtied by white powder and credit cards.

Blaise joins them at the table with a roll of his eyes. “I only bring good stuff, Draco.”

The blond chuckles lowly before snorting a rail with a cut straw. He takes a deep breath. “Yeah, definitely.”

Harry looks at Draco. “Tom?”

The blond scoffs but says: “He said he’ll arrive later. But don’t be a love sick teenager now, because tonight…!”

He slaps hard Harry’s back. “This man is going to break all hell loose!”

“What.”

“Come on, Potty. We’re talking about fun here. Real fun. I mean, you finally freed yourself of that harpy.”

Blaise intercedes, confused. “I thought they were over, since at least a month ago.”

Malfoy leans over the table, suddenly eager. “I know, right? She is such a self-centred, stupid cock sucker bitch.”

“Fuck, shut up. Both of you.” Harry suddenly wants to hit him in the face for the second time that night, but doesn’t. Because in spite of it all, it’s the sort of exasperation which is lined with fondness and in the last year of association they have had each other back more often than not.

“What did I say about fun? Because you’re not really doing a good job right now. He’s interested and I want to gossip, what’s wrong in that?”

Harry looks from Malfoy face to Blaise, who shrugs helplessly at him, and then Nott, who seems more interested in the white rail in front of him.

“Whatever. Give me here.”

Draco makes a cheering sound and passes him the cut straw. “Yes! Even tonight I managed to stain Saint Potter’s soul.”

Harry rolls his eyes at them and leans over the prepared rails on Draco’s left.

He snorts one, then two.

He thinks of Hermione disappointed face. Something dies a little inside him.

He does a third just because he can and throws his head back.

Draco cheers and says something about Saint Potter again and he could never guess how close to the truth he is.

_He feels like a god._

\---------------

Apparently, he lost some parts of conversations because at the club Malfoy’s cousin group is on tonight and he wants to thank them, because they absolutely _blast_. Harry feels hyper, he is there with his friends and he doesn’t even care that they are sweating buckets all over themselves.

Some girls tried to dance with him, but he shrugged all of them off. He doesn’t want anything that remotely makes him think of Ginny, and so he continues to pry their fingers off himself earning even more than a foul gesture in some cases.

Draco just flat out told him he’s a nut case, but not to worry, he would still be friends with him, then proceeded to snog the brunette rubbing herself obscenely all over him.

A few minutes later it all starts to be a bit too much. The deafening music and the stifling crowd closing in on him start to get on his nerves. Somehow he signs to Blaise that he’s going towards the bar and he sets about to snake through the throngs of people. This time the sweat feels disgusting and thanks whatever lord when he reaches a spot where walking isn’t like wading a river of bodies.

When he finds it, Harry grasps the bar counter like a lifeline. “Fuck, I hate this place.”

“Why are you here, then?”

Harry turns, ready to shoot down whoever was trying to hook him up again, but the moment he looks at her he feels a stupid smile stretch on his face. “Luna!”

The hug they share is warm, something tingles in his chest as he breathes in through her blond hair.

“Harry, I missed you.” She sighs across his cheek.

“Me too.” He says as they part. Luna is one of his high school’s friends he hasn’t managed to keep in touch with, because she went to study in another country. She fully grew into a woman in the two or so years they hadn’t seen each other. She is gorgeous in her own way, as usual, her dress is sparkly and the multi-coloured glitters reflects the disco lights across her face. She is like a fairy.

She inclines her head. “It's strange meeting you here.”

Harry looks at her confusedly. “Uh, why?”

“Well, I can't see you as someone who would enjoy a place like this.” She shrugs, but sports a knowing look on her face.

Harry raises an eyebrow and looks to the side, not understanding at all what she is implying. He hesitates as he says: “I’m… here with some friends.”

She hums and rocks a bit on her heels.

“Well, what about you? What brings you here? I thought you were in France.”

She smiles brightly at him. “I came here to spend Christmas with my dad. As for tonight, the singer is my friend, he’s fantastic, isn’t he?”

She looks back towards the stage where the band is sweating their way through the performance. Harry has to agree with her, they are good.

Suddenly a heavy hand slaps his neck. “Woohoo! I’m so hyped! Why did you leave me alone in the crowd, you little shit?”

Harry groans, but a smirk makes his way onto his face. “You weren’t alone. Aren’t Blaise and Theo, there? Not mentioning the girl that was eating your face.”

Draco slams his fists on the counter. “Urgh, you’re such a wanker.” Then looks over his shoulder and adds: “Who’s that?”

“Oh!” Harry exclaims looking at Luna, she waves at them. “That’s Luna Lovegood. She was at school with us, a year younger. Luna, that’s Draco Malfoy, he was… a classmate.”

Draco’s smile shows teeth. “Neat! Well, let’s have a drink.”

While he is ordering, Harry turns to shoot Luna an apologetic smile. She is looking at him with knowing eyes and a soft smile. “I see, a lot changed while I wasn’t here.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He smiles back weakly.

Draco orders them a round of shots, they manage to goad Luna into the first but she declines the second and the third. There isn’t a fourth, fortunately, as Harry’s head is advancing from his fuzzy feeling to an outright spinning state.

They are laughing about something Luna was telling, Draco looking way too much into it whereas Harry is laughing just because the other two are, when he spots a face that makes his insides freeze and his eyes widen. His mind clouds with rage.

“Luna, who did you come with?” His voice is dead serious.

Harry doesn’t need to look at them to see their confused faces and doesn’t wait for Luna to answer him. He stalks towards the unaware Dean Thomas, which is by now near enough to be sure it is his face. Harry’s focus zeroes in on it. And lunges at him.

Someone shouts as they fall, but over the deafening music and the blood that rushed in his ears he hears nothing. He swings a punch to his face, satisfaction grips him when he feels flesh collide, the other was too surprised to react in time.

“What the fuck!”

As he is loading another hit, someone hauls him off the ground. He snarls something, feeling out of his mind as he struggles against the hold.

“Harry, stop.”

Harry reacts more to Tom’s voice than to his words. he freezes in his movements, his vision finally taking in his surroundings. People are looking at him with wide eyes from all sides and has withdrawn from them, not much but enough to form a tiny circle. Dean Thomas is nursing his bloody nose, eyes wide with righteous anger.

“Oh my god!” Ginny is rushing at Dean’s side, kneeling next to him and fussing.

Harry only feels numbness and slight disgust descend over him. He tugs at his arms. “Let me go, Tom.”

He complies, but keeps a hand on his shoulder. Harry doesn’t know if he is feeling grateful or angrier.

He takes a look at Dean’s bloody face, and feels empty again.

Not for long though.

“You’re crazy! Who the hell you think you are!” Ginny is screaming, her voice perfectly clear over the loud music.

Harry says nothing as she comes towards him.

“Don’t look at me like that, for God’s sake! I hate you!” She has frustrated tears in her eyes and is raising a hand to hit him.

He flinches when it swings down, but it doesn’t connect. Tom, looking furious, trapped the wrist in his hand. Harry is sure he has to refrain himself from crushing it, if Ginny’s grimace is anything to go by.

When he speaks, his voice is colder and harder than ice. “I suggest you to step away from us,” Ginny wrenches her arm from his grip, he doesn’t try to stop her, but when she tries saying something, he adds forcefully: “With your mouth shut, Weasley.”

She stares up hatefully at him before her eyes dart to Harry, with a strange shine in them. Harry’s heart skips a beat when he realizes that she is silently asking for back up, she wants to see what he will do. Harry wants to laugh, wondering for how much time she has wanted to put him in front of that choice: herself or Tom.

The grip on his shoulder stiffens minutely, Harry realizes Tom knows. He wonders if he flinched because he is afraid of his answer or for outrage at Ginny’s slight.

“Step back, Ginny. I’m sorry for Dean, but I can’t promise you I won’t lose control again.”

Personally, Harry, feels even angrier than before. If she wants him to crawl back to her, she has another thing coming. She purses her blood red lips as if she has tasted something bad, and takes a step back. “Queers!”

Harry’s insides go cold.

Dean is standing waiting for her, behind him a bouncer is looking at them with narrowed eyes. Harry groans, now they are going to be thrown out too.

They are silent as they make their way outside. Harry doesn’t look back once and at the exit he realizes it’s just Tom and himself. The latter has yet to release his grip on him, when they are outside Harry shivers and releases a fogged breath. Tom shifts said grip and circles Harry’s frame with his arm.

Harry sags in Tom’s hold, resting his head on the other’s shoulder. He can hear the music from the club muted down, like a sort humming vibration. His ears feel padded.

A cold hand rests on his cheek. “Is everything alright, Harry? Did you take something?”

Harry sighs, lifting his head to look in Tom’s eyes. “I had some coke with Draco. A couple of shots in the club, but I feel good enough. Fresh air is clearing my head too.”

“Good.” Tom grins down at him. In his eyes, the warmth he solely reserves for him is smouldering. Harry finds himself hypnotized.

“Let’s go home.”

\-----------

 _Harry chose him._ Harry chose him _._

_His mind can’t settle on anything else._

_He wants to smother him, to take him away from everything and everyone until Harry can’t think of anything else too._

_He wants to crush him, to feel his bones grind against his own._

_He grips Harry’s hand a little tighter._

\-----------

His mouth feels like it’s not his own.

He tries to swallow, but it’s so dry his tongue scratches his palate. He grimaces.

“Do you want some water?”

That’s Tom’s voice, he is on Tom’s bed. Again.

He groans.

Harry feels the bed dip behind him and when it comes Tom’s chuckle is just above his ear. “I’ll take that as a yes, my dear.”

He turns and squints an eye open. He finds Tom looking expectantly down at him. He makes him drink a lot of water, saying it’s good to keep hydrated with a hangover. He has to make a quick escape to the bathroom shortly after, though. Before going back to bed, he splashes his face with cold water, it makes his skin prickle a bit. He feels hot and bothered.

He lays himself beside Tom, who now has his hands underneath his head staring at the ceiling. Harry copies him with a content sigh, crossing his legs at the calves.

“Do you know, Harry, why I left you when we were younger?”

Tom’s voice startles him a bit and he turns on his side to look at him. Tom has a faraway look on his face, as his hand play with the grey button of his pyjama top. Harry doesn't answer, can't for lack of words or something else, he doesn't know.

Tom turns to look at him with something akin to a scolding look. “You never did ask. You just accepted me back into your life, not even demanding an explanation.”

He rests his free hand on Harry’s hip and tugs him nearer, his eyes fixed on the other's lips. Harry wets them feeling trapped, but doesn't feel like escaping. He let himself being scooted towards Tom until they are only centimetres apart.

Tom smiles slightly, looking in to his eyes. “You didn't question me, you didn't want anything in return for what I did to you for all those years. You just wanted _me_.”

Tom chuckles like he can’t believe what he is saying, but still Harry doesn't want to pull away.

Tom gradually turns serious, his face set into a hard look. “You _want_ me.”

Harry can feel heat rise in his chest and his face, as uncertainty strikes home. He is afraid with where Tom wants to go with what he is saying, as unreadable as he always is.

He looks away, but not for long as Tom grips hard his chin and brings his gaze back up. Tom's eyes bore into his own. “Do you want to know? Why I left?”

Harry sucks in a breath, the tightness in his chest becoming nearly unbearable. “Yes.”

The grip on his face softens, until it becomes a caress. “I left because when you found out there was something else for you other than me in this world, I felt cheated.”

Tom takes a deep breath and continues. “It was… crippling. It made me feel weak, the way I kept on thinking about you, the way I craved your happiness. It felt detrimental and I pushed you away.

“But I could never have been more wrong. This.” His free hand grasps his shirt where his heart should be. “This feels strong. I feel like I could move a mountain if you asked me.”

Harry’s mind breaks down to nothing before he feels his chest burn like a flame, and thinks maybe that’s happiness what he is feeling. He doesn’t have any other words that would fit.

It’s too much and it frightens him, but he can’t get enough at the same time.

He chastely kisses Tom’s lips, because it feels like the right answer, but his heart leaps when he hears the other’s breath hitch. He thinks he should add something to it.

“You’re right, Tom, I want you. I want every part of you, and I don’t need a mountain when you’re by my side. Because I don’t need anything else.”

Harry has the sudden realization that they are most likely talking about love, but he doesn’t care to duel on it as he sees Tom’s feral look of joy.

Then he is _everywhere_ , and everything about him is Tom. He kisses him like he wants to breath him in, it’s overwhelming and bruising and Harry doesn’t want to stop anytime soon. Pleasure pools in his pelvis, he strokes the inside of Tom’s upper lip with his tongue, tugs at it as he feels a finger brush against the fly of his jeans. Another slips underneath his shirt, skimming over the skin under his navel.

He doesn’t know if it’s because he is very sensitive at the moment, but a moan escapes him, shamefully so, and Tom chuckles breathlessly against his lips. He receives one last kiss on them before that mouth goes straight for the patch of skin his fingers had just stroked, giving it a wet nip.

Harry feels sparks as his clothed cock brushes against Tom’s chest and jolts. He is suckling and nibbling on the chosen spot, and Harry in the chaos of his mind thinks that it’s going to leave a hickey.

He tries to shove his hand between them to, at least, release his pants, but Tom just traps his arm at his side with his free hand. He gives one last lick at the mark he left, before with the other hand undoes the fly of his pants and lowers his zip. Harry watches him with bated breath.

Tom’s nose lightly scrapes his erection through his boxers and Harry lets out a keening sound. He doesn’t comment on it, but frees Harry’s arm, to lower his pants and boxers. His head dips down, but his lips aim to the side. He kisses the soft skin of Harry’s groin, who gasps because he feels electrocuted.

“ _I worship you_.” Tom utters against his skin, like he doesn’t want to be heard.

Harry’s lips part on a particularly heavy breath he lets out and the hand that it’s not gripping the bed sheets cards itself in Tom’s soft curls. He doesn’t tug, he doesn’t grip, instead he just let his hand slide against Tom’s features with care. When he sees Tom’s eyes slide close at the attention he feels his mouth stretch in a soft smile.

With the hand on Tom’s face he motions him back up, he immediately complies and when they're close enough Harry nuzzles his cheek with his nose. His throat closes up.

This feels real.

He can’t recall the last time he had felt so grounded.

A sob rises from his lungs and it awkwardly fills the silence of Tom’s bedroom.

Tom kisses his dry eyes. “Stay.”

This time Harry stays.

\-----------

Harry finds that moving in with someone is a state of mind, rather than a physical move.

He wakes up one morning to find things like his toothbrush beside Tom’s in the bathroom, or Tom’s favourite brand of coffee surrounded by a little stock of his favourite brand of tea, and realizes that it feels like it had always been there. It feels right.

But when he steps through Grimmauld Place threshold, a foreboding feeling grips his chest. He came here during Tom’s morning shift, because he needed another change of clothes at his new home. As he eyes the eerily silent kitchen, he thinks it hadn’t been such a good idea.

If he thought that the silence right after Sirius’ death had been haunting, the now quiet bareness was downright distressing.

He glances at the sooty table and thinks of warm chocolate, whipped cream and laughter.

He realizes he needs a closure.

\-----------

“I know you know. But I want you to hear it from me.”

Ron is mostly frowning in confusion at one particular colourful pill in his hand, but the stiffness in his shoulders gives him away. Hermione is tearing up, looking at the Xanax on the table. There’s not much piled up on it, mostly pills he has never used, but it feels like a mountain is separating them.

Harry stares at them a bit more before he says: “I never used much of this, but since Sirius died I tried a little of everything. Mostly weed. Then I started to hang out with Malfoy,” Ron’s eyes blaze at him. “And got me into cocaine. It’s almost a year now.”

Ron looks taken aback. “Wait. I thought it was Riddle the one that got you into… this.”

Harry raises his hands. “Oh, absolutely not. Tom doesn’t do drugs, he works and studies like nearly every day. And he cares too much for his brain anyway.”

They say nothing, Ron seemed too upset for words while Hermione had her hands on her face so he couldn’t tell.

He continues. “With that, I wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I have put you through this last year, I know I’m terrible friend and that I should have tried better. Well, I’m trying now, because you’re my family and I can’t lose you.”

His voice breaks down to a whisper at the end and he can’t look at them in the eyes anymore, he feels ashamed with himself. He flinches as Ron strong arms surround him, his best friend is squeezing him tight, and sags in his hold when he feels Hermione joining them. She caresses his hair, a heavy weight lifts from Harry's shoulders.

“Bloody hell, mate, I don't think there’s something you could do that would rid you of us for good. Short of killing us, that is.” he admits.

He feels Hermione nod with a wet chuckle against his cheek and when she speaks, her voice breaks. “Yes, Harry. We'll always stand by you, no matter what.”

He doesn't answer, feeling undeserving of two people like them. He thinks he is too selfish to let them go, so he grips them harder.

After some time, he reluctantly pulls away, looks up and sees Hermione tremulous smile. She is holding his hand as Ron silently gathers everything on the table to dispose of it.

“Let’s make some hot chocolate.”

He smiles. “Okay.”

The rest of the afternoon is spent on the dusty coach of his living room, Harry can feel his face ache from all smiles and laughter he’s had. It’s so good he wants to cry.

When the night comes and he receives a call from Tom, inquiring on his whereabouts, he falters only a moment to look in to kind and accepting eyes before he tells him: “I’m at Grimmauld, with Hermione and Ron.”

There’s only a moment of silence. “I’m coming.”

Harry sighs, because he actually wants him here. So, he says: “I’ll be waiting.”

They spend the rest of the night the four of them. Harry isn’t going to lie, it was awkward as the other three still didn’t feel comfortable with each other but Harry wouldn’t change it for anything else.

He is now curled up against Tom’s sleeping body, both of them cramped in the bed in his former bedroom. Ron and Hermione had gone home some time before, not looking in Tom’s eyes as they said goodbye to him.

Harry smiles and closes his eyes.

He knows it isn’t perfection.

They are still full of issues he isn’t sure they can even work out.

But he is happy.

Everything else is manageable.

\------------

_You make me sick, because I adore you so_

_I love all the dirty tricks, and twisted games you play,_

_On me._

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT 28/09/2017: minor corrections


End file.
